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Lou Coleman
By Lou Coleman
Can’t nobody tell you nothing! You think you know it all! Mark Twain said, “It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.” You ought to mimic Paul who said, “For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified [1 Corin 2: 2].
There are just some people you can’t tell anything. Their minds are like steel traps – tightly shut and difficult to open. They have their mind made up and they’re not going to change for you, me… or even God. That’s pretty much the situation we discover in [Jeremiah 44] when Jeremiah warns the people that God is upset with their behavior… and they respond: “We will not listen to the message you have spoken to us in the name of the LORD!” [Jeremiah 44:16]. They’ve made up their minds. They liked what they’re doing. And they had no intention of stopping for Jeremiah or God.
I will venture to say that we all have come across people who think they know everything. Usually, they like to tell us how they know so much and make us feel like we are inferior. These arrogant personalities are perhaps the most difficult types of people to deal with.
But I just want to bring to remembrance to all the “Can’t tell me nothing” individuals. [Psalm 81:11-14], tells the story of a sad saga of a people who would not listen to God. From this Psalm, we learned that the nation of Israel did not listen to the counsel of God. They tuned Him out and followed their own “stubborn hearts.” You see, God told Israel through His commandments not to bow down to other gods, but they did not listen to Him. Instead, [1 Kings 17:12] says, they worshiped idols, though the Lord had said, “You shall not do this.” They chose to follow their own ways instead of God’s ways. And do you know what happened to the Northern Kingdom known as Israel? And because of their hard-headiness, in 722 BC, they were destroyed by the Assyrian army. Since they did not listen to God, and follow His will, God allowed the Assyrian army to defeat them.
What will happen to those of us who do not listen to God’s Word? “He will punish us who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of Jesus” [2 Thess. 1:8]….. [2 John 9] says, “Anyone who runs ahead and does not continue in the teaching of Christ does not have God; whoever continues in the teaching has both the Father and the Son.”
Listen, if we want to live godly lives, then we must listen to God’s will and then put it into practice. The Bible teaches in [Deuteronomy 11] that if we listen and obey God, we will be blessed. On the other hand, if we do not listen to God, we will be cursed.
God still lives and His Word still speaks. We need to listen to His Word because of our position before Him and our responsibility to Him. It is Finished!
